I spent many hours last week mopping up the usual spills. It was not an easy week, and in the process of dealing with the diversions, distractions and angst, I had not spoken to my mother. Strangely, I did not hear from her. Not one call. And, this is true for the last few weeks, a kind of silence prevailed as though, as if, it were practice for when my mother would no longer be here.

I called earlier: she wanted to know how everyone was feeling, what was going on. There was interest. Not that she doesn’t ask about people, she does, but there was a lightness and a calm I hadn’t observed in a while. Is this what Spring does to people?

“I’ve been sleeping well and dreaming a lot. Nice dreams, pleasant dreams.”

My father, who died at age seventy-eight in nineteen ninety-one, appeared in one dream. They didn’t have the best marriage; there was a lot of stress and anxiety about making ends meet, and the stress poured out into bickering and anger. But, my mother said she was happy to see my father and that when she awoke she was saddened that he was not really there to continue the conversation. A nice conversation.

In another dream, “I saw my older sister. ‘Annette,’ I said, ‘I missed you so much!”

Is this how the elderly make peace? Is this the way it goes?

There were no complaints about the food, this time when I got the report about the meals nothing bad was said. Nothing. “If my teeth were better I could enjoy more.” There was no blame, no anger.

“I have a nice story: When I fell and was in the hospital, one evening a tall handsome man came into my room holding a silk rose. He said he was a minister.” My mother expressed her concern that he had come out in a rain storm. When she asked him why he did, he replied that he came just to see her. “He took my face in his hands and told me I am beautiful and that no one had every showed any concern for his being out in the rain. He said he’d return the following day.”

My mother said that was one of many beautiful stories she could tell about her life; her life that was in a different time, when men would tip their hats and give you their seats on the subway, a time when life was slower and less stressful and people were kinder. A time when you could come home alone at night and not worry.

I caught a glimpse of this “simpler” time when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, just before the big change, when society began to be jostled by drugs and the city was becoming dirty and impoverished in its cycle of growth. Now things are clean and rich and crowded and selfish and bustling and stressful and don’t hold your breath for a seat on a bus.

I told my mother that we would see her tomorrow, and she was happy. Did she need anything?

“Maybelline foundation in fair to medium.”

Tomorrow is my mother’s one hundredth birthday.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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